Are We Just Too Sensitive?

Is America Becoming the Land of the Oppressed and Muzzled?

I've been quite amazed and honestly quite annoyed over the whole political correctness thing here in the U.S.

Of course, recently this has come up again over the issue of whether or not to say Merry Christmas. I'm not going to beat that dead horse, but it is one example of what has become a culture of walking on eggshells, because some person or group of people may be offended. 

I'm not for intentionally offending people, but I do think that maybe, just maybe, people need to thicken their skins a little and not be offended over simple greetings and holidays that have been part of America since its inception.

I've heard people who balk over "Christian" terms lament about what it is like to be a minority (e.g. an atheist) in a country that is predominantly Christian. They have an "oh, but you're a Christian, so you wouldn't understand" theme going.

Little do they know that I do understand. I understand very strongly what it means to be a minority. My husband, two children and I have lived in India. In our city of three million, there were less than 20 white people (from different countries), counting our family of four. Anytime someone new was going to come visit me, I let them know that as long as they got within a couple of miles of our place, all they had to do was ask someone where the foreigners live, and pretty much anyone on the street would be able to give them directions to our home.

We were not only ethnic minorities; we were also religious minorities. As most anyone knows, India is a mostly Hindu nation (approximately 82%), followed by Muslims (approximate 12%) with the remaining 6% of the people in the nation made up of a mixture of religions, including Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Christians. In the state where we resided, only .005% of the population was Christian. To say we were a little different would be an understatement.